twelve high-dollar days of christmas

Every year about this time, PNC Financial Services calculates the cost of the items in the Twelve Days of Christmas song. Those long time readers may remember my commentary on the numbers they presented last year. For those who may not remember, may not have been readers or just want to review those thrilling days of yesteryear, here his what I said.

http://jimboandhisfriends.blogspot.com/2004/11/twelve-days-and-sixty-six-large.html

Well, I read on their website today the updated numbers for 2005. Since they obviously went to a lot of trouble to compile these numbers, I thought it was only right that I include a link, so you can read their report, yourselves. Here it is.


http://www.pncchristmaspriceindex.com/pressrelease.htm



Not to rehash this too much, but you will remember that in the song, everything the protagonist gives his true love is repeated on consecutive days. For example, the first day it is a partridge in a pear tree. In addition to adding a new gift each day, in quantities increasing by the number of the day in the series, the dude repeats everything he has given before. Therefore, he eventually gives his true love twelve partridges in pear trees; two turtle doves eleven times, three French hens ten times, etc.

The aggregate cost of the individual gifts this year is a little over eighteen grand, an increase of 6.1% over last year. However, because of the generosity of the giver and the repetition of gifts, the overall cost of this operation is $72,608, an increase of 9.5% over last year. This is because some of the more expensive gifts are repeated quite a few times.

My first question is, what about this inflation our government tells us doesn’t exist? If it looks like inflation; sounds like inflation; feels like inflation and smells like inflation, then I contend it’s inflation. And what if the brother would have come across with some practical gifts like fuel for his true love’s car or some food, instead of dancing girls, musicians and birds? If our hero would have purchased items from the “volatile food and energy sectors” which the government leaves out of its core inflation numbers, we would have seen even more inflationary pressures. What if his gift the first day was a health care insurance policy? That poor dude’s wallet would be flatter than a pancake by the third or fourth day—and that is only if his true love was lucky enough not to have any pre-existing conditions.

Hang your head in shame, John Snow. Hang your head in shame. You too, Dubya. You two make the Grinch seem like a pleasant fellow.

It seems to me that inflation is eating us alive but our leaders are trying to convince us that everything is fine. They are trying to convince us that inflation is under control and our economy is booming and everyone is working.

The good part of this whole thing is that Jimbo’s girlfriend is a practical woman, and she would never want him to, or expect him to cough up the seventy-two large to come across with all of the crap that is described in the song.

We should all give our true loves practical gifts, but most of all we need to remember to tell them that they are our true love, and save the seventy-two grand for something like retirement.

At least that’s what we think in Jimbo’s world.